RICE
The first thing you want to do when getting injured, unless it is serious and in need of treatment, is to start the RICE method to recovery. RICE is rest, ice, compression and elevation. So firstly you need to rest the part of you that is injured just resting at home, then apply ice to the injury, after that you need to compress the injured area and finally elevate it if you can, so if it is the leg put it up on cushions and a chair or raise your arm up on cushions to elevate it. You should try and do this as much as possible throughout the day and your recovery, make sure you only ice it in short bursts to prevent damage to the surrounding area of the injury from the cold.
Make sure to allow healing
It can be easy to pop a pain killer and move on without the proper healing time but make sure to allow your injury to heal. If you need pain relief to use that part of your body then it is definitely not healed. If you rush this part you are likely to make it worse or even get injured again, so make sure it has healed. If you have to get up and about sooner than would be beneficial then you should try to support the injured area with a splint or brace to stop it from moving about and getting worse and hindering your recovery.
Get support if needed
Getting support is a good idea if you are struggling to heal or struggling to deal with being injured. Recovering from an injury can be tough on mental health especially if you are an active person, if you have had to have an operation on your injury then you should look into post operative care services so that you can manage the injury and make sure you have the support you need to recover. It can be easy to get into a slump and not eat properly or just sit around and not move the rest of your body once you can get up and about so having that support there whether from a professional or family and friends is really important to help you on the road to your recovery.
Try some early ranges of motion
Once you have allowed the inflammation to go down and swelling to subside you should do some minor ranges of movement on the joint that has been injured or left unused. This is really important in the recovery process to make sure you can work back up to a full range of motion. However, try and do this with your doctor or physiotherapist to make sure you are doing the right movements and make sure that you are not doing too much too soon that could hinder your progress.
Help the rest of your body to recover
When you do not use your body and muscles for a while your muscles can deteriorate, you tend to see this more after you have been in a brace or cast following surgery. You should go back to exercising your muscles when you feel ready, the best thing to do to prevent muscle waste or to rebuild after an injury is through resistance workouts. The best thing to start off with is using the bands you can get to do some workouts, once you have built up some strength through the different levels of bands then you can move to more weighted workouts using resistance machines in your gym. Alongside this resistance training, you should do a slow build-up of cardio and endurance to build up the injured area, this can be walking or just moving the arm injured unweighted, to begin with, and building up from there.
If you have been injured or you are recovering from an operation and you are unsure how to deal with the recovery from that then hopefully, these few tips will help you to deal with your recovery and give you some idea of how you can recover as best as possible from your injury.
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